Finding Colin Firth: A Novel (28 page)

Another evening of tossing and turning. Bea’s alarm went off at five thirty on Saturday morning, and she felt awful. She’d been unable to stop thinking of Bette Midler, on her knees, begging for a chance, promising to do whatever Helen Hunt wanted. Maybe Bea had rushed out of Veronica’s house too soon.

She trudged into the shower, which helped, then got dressed
and slogged down the stairs to the kitchen, making omelets and waffles and today’s special, blueberry pancakes. She cleaned the dining room tables, then swept and mopped the floor, imagining Veronica waiting by the phone, wondering if Bea would call back. With that hopeful expression.

They’d met on Thursday night. It was now Saturday.

She was so tired and just wanted to fling herself in bed for a good hour’s nap, but before she could, she grabbed her phone and called Veronica.

“Veronica, it’s Bea.”

“I’m so glad you called.”

Bea had done the right thing. She could hear the relief in Veronica’s voice. “I thought maybe we could get together again. Dinner tomorrow night, if you’re free?”

“I’d love to get together, Bea. But rather than have dinner, I’d like to take you on a tour.”

“A tour? You mean of Boothbay Harbor?” Bea had already seen all the sights. She’d even taken a whale cruise around the bay. She didn’t want to
ooh
and
aah
over lighthouses. She wanted to know the where, what, why, and how of her birth.

“A tour of my life when I was sixteen,” Veronica said. “We’ll start at the high school and end at the Greyhound bus station.”

Bea’s heart skipped a beat.

Two hours later, Bea was sitting inside the empty crew trailer on the movie set, still parked by Frog Marsh, waiting for Patrick for their lunch date, when the door burst open.

“I’m not going back, so don’t waste your breath,” Maddy Echols snapped to someone behind her.

Tyler, her brother. The grumpy production assistant.

He stared at Bea. “What are you doing in here?”

“Meeting Patrick for lunch.”

He rolled his eyes, then turned to his sister, who’d stormed in and sat down on a narrow bench. “Maddy, you are going back. You want to take sophomore English when you’re a junior?”

She pushed her long hair behind her shoulders. “Leave me alone. I can’t understand a word of the stupid book. I’m not reading it.”

“I bought you the CliffsNotes to help you.”

“So now I have to read that too?” she shouted.

He threw up his hands. “Fine, fail the class. Fail high school. Drop out.”

Bea realized she was watching them as though she were at a tennis match. Both spoke in the same rapid-fire way. They looked nothing alike, of course; Maddy was petite, with wavy, dark brown hair and huge hazel-green eyes, and Tyler was tall and angular, with that mop of sandy-blond hair. She’d give Tyler twenty-three, maybe twenty-four. He had a dimple in his left cheek, which she probably hadn’t noticed before because he never smiled. But the chewing on the inside of his cheek brought it out. He cared about his sister, that was obvious.

“I don’t mean to eavesdrop,” Bea said, “but since I’m sitting right here . . . I assume you’re talking about
To Kill a Mockingbird
again?”

Maddy turned to her. “You mean ‘To Kill a Boring Bird.’ ”

That got her Tyler’s trademark eye roll. “It’s a great book,” he told his sister. “One of my favorites.”

“Like we’re so similar,” Maddy muttered.

“Maddy, I graduated from college—Beardsley—last year
with an English degree,” Bea said. “I’m planning to be an English teacher. Middle school or high school. I’ve read
To Kill a Mockingbird
at least five times since I was a sophomore in high school, and like I said, I wrote my senior thesis on it. I could help you, talk you through the themes of the book or whatever’s giving you trouble.”

Tyler was watching her, she knew.

“You’re in summer school, I presume,” Bea said to Maddy.

“And if she doesn’t pass the class by reading the book and writing an essay with a grade of B minus or better,” Tyler said, staring hard at his sister, “she fails and will have to take sophomore English again when she’s a junior in the fall. Then she’ll end up short of English credits to graduate.”

“So what?” Maddy said. “It’s not like I’m necessarily going to college. I don’t need to read ‘To Kill a Stupid Bird’ in order to backpack around Italy.”

“I backpacked around Italy the summer I graduated from high school,” Bea said. “I had the most amazing time.”

Maddy’s face lit up. “Really? I’m obsessed with Rome. I want to see the Colosseum, throw coins in the Trevi Fountain. See the statues of angels. And the Sistine Chapel.”

“If you pass this class, I’ll take you,” Tyler said, gritting his teeth.

The girl stared at him. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. You pass the class and I’ll take you to Italy. You’ll see the Sistine Chapel.”

She wanted that trip, Bea could see. Bad. Bad enough to pass the class.

“You can help me?” Maddy said to Bea.

“We don’t even know her,” Tyler said, clearly mimicking Bea from the other day. Though it was true.

“I’m staying in town for the next few weeks. At the Three Captains’ Inn. I tutor at Beardsley during the school year, so I’m experienced. Here’s my ID from the Writing Center.” She took it from her wallet and handed it to him.

He studied it, then handed it back to her. “Maddy, can you wait for me outside for a second?”

Now that Italy was on the table, Maddy jumped at his request.

When the door closed behind her, he said, “How much do you charge?”

“If I wasn’t broke, I’d offer to do it for free,” she said. “But I’m working for my room and minimum wage at the inn, so I really could use some extra cash. Fifty bucks an hour.”

“Fifty bucks? Jesus.” He moved aside the little curtain at a window and peered out at Maddie, who had her compact out and was reapplying her gooey lip gloss. He let the curtain drop. “Fine. But I want you to work with her in the library—not our mom’s house or here. I want her to take this seriously.”

“Okay. The library it is.”

He pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up on his nose. “The class ends in three weeks. I’m thinking once a week for an hour should be fine.”

“So you’re from Boothbay Harbor?” she asked.

“Two towns over,” he said, as though giving personal information was a hardship for him. “The high school’s regional.”

The door pounded. “Hello, I’m sweating out here,” Maddy shouted.

“One sec,” he called out. “When can you start?”

“Whenever you want.”

“How’s Wednesday? I take her out to dinner every Wednesday night so I know it works for both our schedules.”

Fifty bucks would buy a nice outfit at the consignment shop for the dinner cruise Patrick told her he wanted to take her on sometime soon.

“Meet her at the Boothbay Harbor library at five,” Tyler said. “Will that work?”

She nodded, and he stepped toward the door, then turned back to her.

“Don’t bring up the birth mother thing,” he said. “She’ll get angry and distracted.”

“Okay.”

He headed for the door, then turned back. “Did you meet yours yet?”

“I don’t really want to talk about it with you,” she said.

He stared at her, then shrugged and went down the step.

Patrick had time only for a twenty-minute lunch, but Bea didn’t mind. It was fun to eat in the air-conditioned trailer, watch the occasional assistant come in, then dart out when it was clear this was a private lunch. Over Italian subs, he told her about production schedules and call sheets, which listed where and when the actors had to show up. He explained he was something of a backstage manager, making sure everything was as it should be for filming the scene.

She liked him. A lot. He was good looking and smart and responsible for quite a bit on this film. He asked right away how
meeting her biological mother was, and when she told him she’d rather talk about him, he still tried to keep the conversation about her. She told him more about losing her way last year, after her mother’s death, and that she planned to apply to a hundred schools if she had to for a job as an English teacher. He said he thought it was noble, that teachers should make more money. She liked the way he looked at her, his intelligent blue eyes full of interest, respect . . . desire for her.

He was called away to douse yet another fire, as he put it, but not before he kissed her on the lips. “The next few days are going to be crazy all day, but maybe you could come by my hotel Tuesday night. For a late dinner around eight? I won’t be back till right before then, and have to get up at the crack of dawn, but I’d love to sit on my balcony with you and have some great room-service fancy dinner and just talk. And I mean that—just talk. This isn’t some ploy to get you in bed. Not that I don’t think you’re incredibly beautiful, Bea.”

She smiled, and he kissed her good-bye, a sweet kiss on the lips. This was perfect. Now she’d have something exciting to look forward to, especially if Veronica’s “tour” was too much, too hard to take in. And Bea was sure that it would be.

Veronica sat in her car in the driveway of the Three Captains’ Inn at noon on Sunday, reminding herself that she was here as much to deliver three pies as she was to pick up Bea for the tour of her life. She got the pies out of her trunk, her monthly invoice for June in an envelope taped to the top box. The box labeled blueberry reminded her of Nick; he’d mentioned that Leigh had caught a bad cold on Friday, and Veronica had baked a special Feel Better Pie—blueberry—and brought it over Friday evening. Nick’s house was a white clapboard cottage not too far from downtown. Leigh had been propped up on the sofa, watching
How to Train Your Dragon,
and she’d invited Veronica to come watch with them, but Nick hadn’t seconded the invitation. Veronica wasn’t sure if two movies in two nights with her would be one too many, or if maybe their evening together on Thursday had been a bit too unexpected. He’d left soon after
A Single Man
had ended, giving her a squeeze of the hand when she’d expected a kiss. Not that she’d been ready for a kiss from Nick DeMarco—talk about loaded—but if she was honest with herself, she wanted him to want to kiss her. She wanted him to want her.

Because he represented her past? Because she hadn’t been accepted back then? Because the one guy who had accepted her—someone Nick had
been friends with—had turned around and betrayed her? Or maybe it was much scarier than any of those reasons. Maybe she just . . . liked Nick.

Boxes of pies in her hands, she headed up the pretty stone path to the porch of the inn. For almost a year now she’d been making weekly deliveries of her pies to the Three Captains’, and the beautiful Victorian was as familiar as her own house, but now her birth daughter was inside. Waiting for her in the parlor to go on a tour of Veronica’s life at age sixteen.

This was your idea, she reminded herself, placing the pies on the table inside the foyer, where she always left them for Isabel. She went into the parlor, but Bea wasn’t there yet. The inn smelled wonderful, the hint of bacon and warm bread in the air. From where she sat on the love seat, she saw Bea appear at the landing of the stairwell, in a pale pink tank top and jeans, and Veronica stood up as Bea came into the room.